Enter Time Against Projects with Project Management Software

Pensanomica

"Project Insight project management software has greatly increased our efficiency because each person knows what their assigned tasks are and what's required to execute those tasks."
- CEO

Main Challenges

Although Pensanomica's project managers were able to properly forecast project budgets, they were not able to compare the initial forecast with the actual number of hours to determine billable hours and project-specific profit margins.

Did not have an easy-to-use solution for tracking all projects and tasks

Project managers were not always able to track tasks and issues that arose in a project in real time. The inability to track who was responsible for each task and the amount of time they were dedicating to each project meant management was not always able to provide the proper resources required to find a solution. They also lacked the ability to create burn down charts comparing how a task was being performed in relation to the initial estimate. "What we required was an easy-to-use, cloud-based project management solution that allowed us to share information over the Internet," said Pensanomica's CEO. "We needed to track the status of each project including the number of resources being used, whether it was on schedule, and what the actual costs to date were." "We also needed reporting tools that allowed us to produce information on the spot without having to spend several hours working with Excel files in order to send status reports on each project." It became obvious a project management solution was required to improve efficiency and productivity.

Why Project Insight

The management team established a set of criteria for evaluating project management solutions. The ideal solution had to be cloud based, easy to use, able to compare estimated costs with actual costs in real time, provide robust reporting capabilities and fit Pensanomica's budget.

Met their established set of criteria

Was easy to use

Tracked resources and tasks very well

Provided burn down charts

Management initially evaluated 10 vendors and had several online demo meetings. The list of vendors was eventually narrowed down to three, then to one - Project Insight. "The main reason we selected Project Insight, project management software was its ease of use," the CEO said. "Project Insight has great reporting features that allow us to track resources and tasks very well. The software also includes a central repository so we can organize projects with all documents in one place so all team members can access the most up-to-date project data along with any comments."

Showed burn down charts displaying a graph of work remaining over time

"With Project Insight implemented, all team members now have personalized dashboards, which increases their personal involvement," the CEO stated. "This has greatly increased our efficiency because each person knows what their assigned tasks are and what's required to execute those tasks." "The software has greatly improved communications between teams since they're now able to record everything within the software. Everyone involved in the project can read all the comments to keep up to date."

Another major benefit is the project managers' ability to compare estimated costs with actual costs. This prevents excess expenditures on a project. Also, the information helps the team to stay on track as they no longer miss deadlines because of poor estimates. By using time sheets, each team member enters time spent on tasks. This means that they can produce a profit and loss analysis for each project to determine exactly how much each project costs. Plus, they can learn from past experience.

"The time sheets were an unexpected benefit," said the CEO. "They're much easier to fill out than before, which gives us more information about what's actually being done. And though we didn't plan on it, we're now able to schedule and send customers reports about tasks being performed with resource comments." With Project Insight, portfolio and project management software, project managers now have the ability to tailor their reports. They can produce information about projects on demand, allowing them to focus more on executing projects at hand and less time on generating reports. The software's 'dynamic date' feature allows project managers to produce several custom reports that can be kept up to date. Dynamic dates allow one to create a report with a certain timeframe like 'current month' and save it. Once it is saved, the report always reflects data from the current month over time. The team also applies an agile methodology with their projects to produce instant burn down charts that enable them to proactively track how a project is behaving in real-time vs. the estimates.